What if? (English)
by Elizabehta Beilschmidt
Summary: What if the wolves arrive a little too late? What If Laurent did bite her? Bella fullfils her dream of being a vampire, but it quickly turns into a nightmare as she finds herself alone, hungry and heartbroken; with no one by her side to help her and guide her. When there's nothing left in this world, would she make the same decisions as if she were surrounded by her loved ones?


This is a quite old twilight fanfic that I was too lazy to translate, but finally decided to.

I translated this myself and English is not my native language. I keep improving, so feedback is more than welcomed!

* * *

 ** _What if?_**

I perfectly remember that day as if it were yesterday. Obviously, with this new vampire mind, I was able to remember every drop of rain that hit my face since I regained consciousness after burning for an eternity, every smell that assailed my nose, and even the taste of the first breath in this new life.

I remember the pain that hit me when I reckoned my recent memories like a sword stuck in the middle of my chest. My emotions moved to the front of my mind, amplified by this new body full of new sensations. The pain of rejection, helplessness at seeing me so _lonely_ and despair knowing that everything that I had lived, that fantastic dream of just few months, was gone and never coming back.

Or so I thought.

When Laurent appeared in the clear I never thought it would come to this. I remember with vivid clarity the voice of Edward's illusion yelling me to distract him and tell any lie, but silly me I didn't do it on time. He lunged at me with those eyes, dark crimson from hunger, and I could barely register the pain of his fangs as almost immediately a new agony spread throughout my body. I did not register either when someone pushed away the body of the vampire feasting on my blood, nor heard the roars and howls filled with fury.

And that was how I discovered that my best friend was a werewolf. The same day I was exiled from Forks, the day I woke up after what they said were three days of infinite hell, Jacob held my cold hand between burning his and looked at my eyes with a mix of feelings in theirs. He said, "You know, Bells? I really loved you, but now ... now that's not possible."

And just like that, everything I knew crumbled before my very eyes. I could not mourn, I could not scream. I could not even move when I was left with my own means on the edge of the small town of Forks. I watched them go back to the reserve turned into these huge animals designed to kill my kind, realizing that I've been spared only because of Jacob, and that I would never see my friend and my Sun again.

* * *

Living in the streets was relatively easy when you're a vampire. Never getting hungry, never feeling cold or never having to sleep. Eventually I stopped caring about being covered with dirt or wandering aimlessly through the streets or not having a place to return to. I had no money, but I did not need anything, I only needed blood.

At first I refused to move from my refuge in the depths of a forest for fear of finding a human, but the thirst was so strange to me that it instinctively made me move. Before I knew it in my arms was the empty body of a mountaineer who would adventured too deep into the woods and had to be too close.

I wanted to die. I spent even more time locked away from humanity, remembering again and again to the family of vegetarians who I loved despite everything, thinking that he did not want me to become a monster. I'm still proud to have resisted the temptation the weeks that I did until my body simply disconnected from my mind and began acting on its own. I had to eat, it was just that, and the blood of the hiker was just too delicious. I could not go back.

But that did not make me a monster. I was the same person, if this empty shell could be called person, no matter whose blood I drank. I did not enjoy the suffering of my victims, or found any fun in their terror or seeked entertainment that gave life to my long existence. Nor it sickened me. Simply it was what it was. I needed to eat, they were there within my reach. They did not even know what was that had happened to them as they never saw me coming.

Still, perhaps in honor of my lost love, I carefully chose my victims among the worst of worst kind, those who would die anyway or should not have been born, and I had to limit my thirst.

And so in a slow succession of week after week, year after year, I rolled with my empty existence to the point where I forgot the sound of my voice, how my parents were called or why it had come to become this.

* * *

And you may ask, after so many years, have I not met any of my species? It is true that there are not many in the world, but pure statistics say that some should have crossed my path.

The truth is that I often saw several vampires, and at close distance. That was how I discovered I had the uncanny ability to be completely _invisible._ Not physically, but even if I were close enough for them to detect my scent, they never managed to find me, even taking them in circles until desisting and letting go. If I did not move and I focused enough, they couldn't even see me. As if the place where I was wasn't at all interesting, and when it seemed that they were going to look at me they turned to look elsewhere.

And so I never had any problems with other vampires; and if I didn't want to be seen by humans I simply had to think about it and I became completely "invisible".

It was precisely that what saved me from certain death.

* * *

The Volturi. I had the opportunity to watch firsthand how deadly they could be and the speed with which they came searching for me. If I did not have this power surely I would have died many years ago.

You see, when I felt strong enough to control my thirst to be among humans, I made the mistake of returning to Forks. Nostalgia, perhaps? I don't know, I just knew I wanted to come back and see everything once again and have that closure that I was denied and, silly me, to see if I would finally stop thinking so much of the months I spent in the town and the family of vampires that I met there. Obviously it did not help.

My father was destroyed. When I went to see him before going to the town, I looked through the window and there I saw him, surrounded by empty pizza boxes and empty beer bottles. It was about two in the afternoon and he should be at the police station, but was instead on the living room couch with a bottle in his hand and looking the TV screen without really watching what was on. And in his hand, a sign of "Have you seen this girl?" with a photograph of my human version. He was incredibly aged even though I had not been gone for more than a few months, and I just knew the gray hairs that had populated his head was completely my fault.

I could not look anymore and went to the school I never thought I yearn to see. I watched from the woods that surrounded it how everyone was going from one class to another and moved around campus, books in their hands and their faces full of concern for a lot of issues that were so alien to me now.I looked face by face for any known one but did not recognize any. My old friends had to be here, they were approaching final exams and graduation and they would not be allowed to skip class. As the minutes passed and all students were leaving after the last class, I analyzed every face feeling butterflies in my stomach. Perhaps I had forgotten them all? Forgotten Angela?

And I saw the face that I less wanted to see and, as if I really were so jinxed, she realized that I was watching and turned to see me. I did not have to see those eyes or blond hair to know it was her because the cry she let no more than two seconds after would be able to make me feel sick to the stomach had I been alive.

Lauren.

"Look what we have here," she said, getting those who did not turn by her shriek do so now. And I felt everyone's eyes on me, on my face, in my white skin, my clothes that I have not changed since Laurent attacked me. It could not escape. "Our beloved Isabella Swan! The prodigal daughter returns home, huh?" She started walking towards me and I could hear her slightly accelerated pulse calling me. Imperceptibly I swallowed the poison that was gathering in my mouth. "We've been very worried, _Bella_ ," she spat my name in disgust, "Where have you been all this time?"

From the giggles of the girls who accompanied her I did not have to be a genius to realize that Lauren had been spreading all sorts of nasty rumors about me and my disappearance. A few more people turned to see what was happening and gradually saw the recognition shine on their faces, followed by a range of expressions from surprise to disgust, through amusement.

The situation was so like a high school soap opera I could not even feel afraid of what this human was trying to do to me. Inside my body there was just bloodlust and she was already too close.

"Bella!" a new person approached. Angela. "Oh my God, you're alive! I can't believe it!"

I moaned, scared. No no no. _Please do not get near me_ , I chanted in my head. But she ran to me with the solid intention to embrace, pushing Lauren out of her way. She threw herself into my arms, remaining motionless when she felt my cold and hard as stone skin. If I had a pulse it would be at full speed by the anxiety I felt at that moment.

I shouldn't have come here. Damn, I shouldn't have.

I could feel all eyes on me, on my face and especially on my red eyes. I could almost hear their thoughts thinking that I was Bella, but at the same time I was not; that was really obvious by the way their expressions changed the following seconds.

I turned my eyes to Angela and swallowed the poison that had returned to accumulate in my mouth feeling my will fade whenever the blood hit the same spot on the skin of her neck.

"Bella," she whispered, raising a hand to touch my face, her eyes roaming my new perfect and dangerous features. "What happened to you?"

"That she underwent surgery to look like her Edward" Lauren answered for me, followed by a chuckle from the people around her. Other people just watched, some feeling obviously uncomfortable after realising that I was not _human_ by now. "I can not believe you've fallen so low, Bella. I knew your obsession was not normal, but this..."

"Is that's true?"

"I do not think so…"

"God, and she seemed responsible."

"Bells," the girl in my arms caught back my attention, her pulse quickening, probable feeling a instinctual fear that she surely could not explain. And I knew I could not escape anymore.

Lauren approached us and a slightly pushed away my human friend to look at me more closely. I returned her defiant gaze, feeling the poison flowing uncontrollably with every sweet human heartbeat from the girl that was trying to humiliate in public. But how little I cared about that now. There was nothing to humiliate me for anymore and saying things about the Cullen wouldn't have any effect in me. They were gone and I had been left behind and I think the message was very clear. I had accepted that in my days of isolation.

The blonde huffed and turned to look at his followers, telling them something that I could not register because when she raised her hand to grab my hair, the concentrated scent of her blood through the thin skin of the wrist hit me right in the nose .

And my mind disconnected from my body, driven by bloodlust that I always felt, leaping from body to body and emptying them quickly before they knew what had hit them. When I was finally full, my eyes focused and I saw that in my bloody hands lay, lifeless although a little warm still, the body of maybe my only friend in my previous human life; her face frozen in a grimace of terror, perhaps a cry, and the ripped open neck in a rather animalistic bite.

* * *

I still remember my frightened face in the videos that roamed the Internet the following days. Students who were far enough away to escape the massacre recorded everything with their phones (I guess they wanted record _Bella's_ reaction to Lauren's provocations), and obviously that went to the news.

Until suddenly everyone pretended that nothing had happened, the initial alarm replaced by weather news and everything was blamed on an occultist group making sacrifices to Satan. No one mentioned the word "vampire" and in a couple of months the situation was forgotten. And the Volturi were obviously behind.

I saw them track me with a perfection of Swiss watch, one by one killing the witnesses who were not willing to let it go as another strange thing in the town of Forks. I saw them in person when they almost caught me outside Seattle, a day after the slaughter, as I wiped off the blood on my clothes.

They weren't able to find me thanks to my power, but their breaths on my neck was a memory I did not want to keep the rest of my life. From what I could understand from their conversation one was a tracker, as was James, and it was getting on his nerves not being able to accurately locate my position more than a general area. They never gave up, and although over the decades they stopped looking, I know they were in the shadows waiting to come out to get me, and probably destroy me.

* * *

I looked away from the lifeless eyes of the person who was my dinner while I wiped the remnants of blood from my fangs, listening intently. Few people adventured so close to the outskirts of city at this time of the morning, at least not so silently, as would someone who was drunk or high.

I cocked my head and dropped some junkie's empty body at my feet, a shudder running through me at the taste of his contaminated blood, to crouch in case of these new vampires come for me. But they did not approach the city and the people, they went to the forest and up to mountain. How strange, I thought, no vampire in hunting mode (because at that speed and perfection of movements they _were not_ playing) would go to ...

Oh, well. Vegetarians.

An imaginary cold sweat made me squirm. I had never crossed paths with vegetarian vampires before and the chances of it being _them_ were painfully high. I did not know if I wanted see them still, mainly because of the suddenness and little time to prepare. Because I was sure that I have forgiven them. It was not his fault that Laurent was in the clearing at that time and it was just my own stupidity that had brought me into the wolf's mouth, pun intended. The Cullen had made the decision that best ensured the survival of the group and now I could see the logic in that. That's why I had buried my feelings as deeply possible and tried to rebuild my life all these years, as promised.

But, was I going to try to approach? With my power I wasn't sure if they'd find me anyway and I would feel like a coward if I tried to hide and escape or wait for them to leave, especially when on my part there was no hostility.

I glanced at the dry body at my feet and sighed. While at this point I do not know if thera was any hostility ... I did not hunt like them and it would cause some tension, I was sure. They would ask questions, try to change my way of life ... But I do not think they'd reaccept me, especially if they knew that I am the most wanted vampire by the Volturi despite nearly hundred years from incident in Forks and they could attack the family if they are associated with me.

I sighed again, looking at the forest.

* * *

A couple of hours later, when I had buried my victim and had changed my clothes to something more suitable to wear, I went to track down the vampires I detected before. First I could hear and then finally I could see them pounce on a group of deer that did not know who attacked them.

Completely clean clothes and not a single spot of blood or a single hair out of place, Emmet, Rosalie and Carlisle were cleaned any stain on the lips as they stood on the clearing without knowing that I was watching them. I sighed mentally, it was now or never.

I left my hideout making my steps sound heavier and deliberately raised my arms to make me less of a threat. I've waited for them to finish hunting for a reason.

"Who's there -!?" Yelled the blonde turning to face me, her body turning to stone when she recognized me.

"What-" Emmet now turned.

I set me eyes on Carlisle when he finally looked at me, trying to make as if the surprise and horror crossed his eyes did not affect me; as if the small icy dagger dug into my heart did not exist when they went into a defensive stance; or as if I didn't feel my stomach turn itself out when they did not relax even though recognition shone in their eyes.

"Bella," Emmet whispered, his face full of confusion. He looked at Carlisle not really knowing what to do in this situation.

"Oh my God," Rosalie brought her hands to her mouth, "Edward will have a stroke."

"Carlisle, what do we do?"

"Hm ..." he said, deep in thought.

I remained impassive as they deliberated, my gaze hovering between the three figures and my body still as a stone, as I was used to be. This was going to happen sooner or later and I was somehow grateful that these three have been those who were hunting when I found them.

"Bella, are you coming home with us?" I came back to reality and looked at him with all the force of my red eyes. I tried not to register the face he made at them.

I nodded silently without bothering to smile.

I still had not opened my mouth when I saw the house that so painfully reminded me of the one I knew in Forks and I wondered for a moment how many houses had family around the world.

"Oh ...Is good that he it is not at home," whispered Carlisle and I immediately knew who he meant.

At the door Esme was waiting with her hand on her chest and the most serious face I ever saw in her. I glanced past her to see what was behind. Alice was waiting for us in Jasper's arms, sitting on the couch and staring at the horizon with an empty face transforming her perfect features into those of a doll. I set eyes on Jasper when he got up into a defensive pose.

I tilted my face going over his scars with my eyes, on his beautiful golden eyes, remembering the details of his difficulty adapting to the vegetarian lifestyle. Had he finally gotten the hang of it? I smiled cautiously wishing things with Jasper and our past were less strained.

"What happened? What is she doing here?" hissed the blond, one hand hovering near Alice.

"Jazz …" Esme put a hand on his shoulder and smiled at me apologetically.

"No offence taken," I finally spoke with my little used but beautiful voice, "is a normal reaction."

"Bella, how is it that you are ... alive" said Alice when she got out of the trance. She looked about to cry.

"How long …?" Carlisle sat in the chair beside me.

"Oh, Bella. What happened to you?" Esme dropped on the armrest where her husband sat.

I looked around observing every little detail of the great room, recognizing a couple of objects. I lowered my eyes to Carlisle and Esme, Emmett, Jasper and Rosalie, Alice's horrified eyes. I could almost see the thoughts going full speed on her head.

"Sometimes, although we think that a situation is fixed and finished, problems do come back," I said finally letting myself go down my memories of that afternoon when Bella Swan died. "Even if James was more than dead, Victoria and Laurent were hovering too close Forks, waiting."

"Oh no," Esme gasped, one hand on her mouth. I nodded.

"She wanted revenge and was trying to figure out the best plan to get to me. She recruited Laurent, who had given up your lifestyle, and was around Forks those days. I found him by chance and he was too hungry to wait for her." I slightly smiled.

And then I explained what had happened to me since then, my power, my current diet, Forks' incident and why I had decided to come and see them after so many years. Various stages of horror crossed their faces and eyes, and I really don't know what part of my story had shocked them more. I no longer cared. The strong need for acceptance that I felt before when I was human had faded over the decades of a life where I had no one else beside me to impress and a place to belong.

It would hurt if they couldn't accept this new "me", but I wasn't willing to change now to fit in the Cullens. Even if that was still an option.

When I finished my tale I stayed standing right there with a tiny smile, trying to ease the obvious tension in the air. I watched them pass a hand through their hair, sigh, look elsewhere... except my red eyes.

I knew what they were thinking, of course I did. I didn't need Edward hearing their thoughts to know what they were thinking. It only took looking into their golden eyes, the tension in the muscles under the skin of granite or slightly pursed lips in concentration to know the answers.

* * *

The cool evening breeze cradled my hair as I sat on a rock near the back door of the humble but enormous cabin-mansion that the Cullen had chosen as home in some well hidden place in the forest. I wondered vaguely if it was on purpose and if they did not want to make life in this city by being so far from humanity. Did the years change their modus operandi? Or just this place was a temporary thing and they thought that having to leave early was enough reason to not be necessary to show a façade of normal human.

I sighed.

With eyes closed I heard him before he reached home, his steps being slightly lighter and faster than others, his sweet scent assailing my nose. I could recognize it anywhere even after all that happened, I thought sadly. I felt the slight tug on my chest where my dead heart was that had nothing to do with the pain that initially felt when I thought about him, and sighed as this has brought me the opportunity to be sure that yes, I had forgiven everything that happened and that no, I didn't want to give it another chance. Friendship, perhaps, but our "bond" broke so many years ago and over time the possibility of fixing it had faded into nothing.

I straightened up on my place, getting into a perfect Greek statue position of and waited for him to appear.

A slight breeze and the sound of his rapid breathing told me the time to open my red eye, fixing them into his soft creamy golden ones, ignoring the grimace that he made for a second at the intensity of my intense ruby eyes, those of a freshly fed. His expression was a frightening mixture of horror, shock, disbelief and _denial_ at what was happening, telling me everything I needed to know and confirm that for him things were different now. I vaguely wondered if he had met someone else or if he had somehow moved on; but knowing how things are as a vampire, as I do now, you never really "turn over a new leaf".

I got up with unnecessary slow, for our species, and smiled.

"Hello, Edward. It's been a long time, isn't it?"

* * *

"I don't understand why he does this," Alice mumbled while walking in circles in the corner, "I'm so sorry, Bella, I did not expect him to react that way."

"Oh, honey …" Esme sobbed and collapsed in my arms. Carlisle was right behind her with pursed lips and lost in thought, one hand on his wife's waist offering silent support.

I sighed for the thirty-fourth time that night.

I turned my eyes to Emmet and Rose sitting on the couch, her arms crossed and a frown on her face, he with an arm around the blonde's shoulder as if he were supporting her, but I knew better. He was holding her in place to stop her from killing someone. Jasper has followed Edward when he ran away.

I patted the weeping mother could that couldn't cry and rested my head on hers, trying to reassure her that nothing was wrong and that _I_ was okay.

" It's okay, Esme. Somehow I am not surprised that he reacted that way. I remember that he was very much against my turning and that he was ... sickened of this lifestyle" everyone in the room knew that I was not referring only to being a vampire, but my chosen diet.

"But he you called _monster"_ Esme said in my ear with a disbelieving voice. I closed my eyes tightening the embrace. I was not used to them worrying about me, much less in a motherly way, and I loved the detail. "He has no right to do so. When he gets home he will have to face a _very_ angry Esme."

Emmet looked at her with wide eyes and somehow I knew it would not be pretty. I smiled widely and pushed her gently out of the embrace to look at her eyes, giving her a slight squeeze on the shoulder.

"Don't worry, Esme. For real. I'm fine."

The other pursed her lips, upset by the situation but understanding what I meant, which appreciated. After all that had happened I did not want to make this bigger than it was and if Edward wanted to behave so selfishly it was neither my right nor my responsibility to correct it. He was a big boy now.

I went to the couch to sit beside Emmet and leaned on his shoulder slightly, feeling his heavy breathing like a large animal, going through my thoughts about the brief but intense argument with the vampire that as soon as he saw my red eyes shouted that I "was not Bella". Or, at least, was not the same Bella who he had left in Forks.

He said that instead I had become ... something. A _monster_ , I know he wanted to say, and I let him know it. He did not deny it.

Still I do not know what hurt more, the expression on Edward's face or cowardice he proved to have when he turned around and run the other way. Worst of all is that in my mind I was not able to match the image of the Edward I fell in love with in school, so ethereal and perfect, and that always knew what to what to do; with this Edward, ironically more humane and unable to confront the ghosts of his past. And that had preferred to flee rather than accept that he was wrong those years ago, that I had changed to be someone else.

* * *

A few hours later and after many farewells, promises to meet again more often, having gotten a satellite cell phone and exchange numbers with all of the Cullen, I was standing on the porch of their home saying goodbye with my hand and a big smile on the face. The weight that was on my chest had disappeared almost completely, a small thorn with the name of a certain vampire with coppery hair uncomfortably digging in my side.

I had not gone two steps when I felt him coming towards me at full speed. I turned to see what he wanted from me, trying to make my face as emotionless as possible, so it did not show how upset I was with him for calling me "monster".

"Bella…" he whispered, frowning. He ran a hand through his hair nervously. I remembered that gesture, how weird. "I'm sorry. That wasn't an exemplary behavior."

"Not much," I simply answered. My honesty seemed to throw him back for a moment.

"I've really had a hard time accepting that ... Well, what you are."

"A vampire. Yeah," I said looking into the woods behind me. "Edward, I'll be frank with you. It's been almost a hundred years and I have forgiven what happened. I've moved on, or what we call in this long existence 'turn a new leaf'," he nodded in understanding, a sad glint in his gaze, "but those times are never coming back."

I could see in his eyes that he knew where I wanted to go with those words and any speech he had prepared crumbled into dust leaving only bare emotions. He was confused, sad, and with an expression of a helpless child and for a second I felt like a hugging him. He had spent at least fifty years of his life thinking that I was dead, I had to concede him that. And I would be just as confused if suddenly someone appeared at my house, a vampire whom I believed had died of old age.

"I understand," he took my hand gently, but there was nothing romantic about it then. "I regret even more deeply for having made this reunion so awkward. Please come back home more often. We've really missed you…"

"Will do," I smiled and walked over to give him that hug we both needed.

And I could see the rays of a possible friendship starting from scratch. A less lonely life, without carrying my sorrow by myself or not having where to go. At least there was a family of vegetarian vampires who would come to help without thinking twice, no matter what happened. And I would obviously do the same for them.

* * *

I blinked feeling that the lenses that Alice had given me were clouding my vision more and more. Argh! It was so uncomfortable.

But the need to blend in better with humans was greater since my red eyes did not go as unnoticed as the golden ones of the vegetarians and I could not focus on my power for so long to not rely on extra help to avoid being discovered.

Right now I was trying to buy new clothes without going crazy in the process and I have not been even fifteen minutes into the mall when the phone that the Cullen had given me this year rang. The other one worked perfectly fine, but their excuse was that it had to be up to date with the new technologies. I was not one to deny them anything when Esme looked at me with such intensity.

"How dare you go shopping without calling me!" said the high-pitched voice of the pixie from the other side of the line. I sighed.

"Alice, I'm not even "shopping". I just needed some new clothes-" but, of course, I was interrupted.

"I'll be there in ten minutes. Don't you dare to move!"

I blocked the phone with a small smile. My life had changed since I decided to contact the Cullen family, and it had been for the better. They treated me like one of them but not pressured the issue of Edward, and I appreciated it. I wanted to be myself, and eventually they had accepted my human diet so it was no longer any problem between us. They had also stopped trying to convince me to switch to vegetarianism, although occasionally they brought it up jokingly.

My smile broadened as I raised my eyes to the dark sky with gray clouds. This was not the life as vampire I had wanted so many years ago, but it was the life where I had done the best I could with the cards that were given to me. And knowing this made me feel more complete than ever.


End file.
